BOILING SPRINGS — It’s a job where the biggest opponent may be one’s self.

As a goalkeeper in soccer, most of the action can take place elsewhere on the field. But when it does come your way, it usually happens fast and a team’s fate can hinge on the result.

But it’s not only the keepers, as well as their coaches, that have to keep their anxiety in check. The parents of the players standing in the box battle the tension as well.

“It’s nerve-wracking, all that pressure on her,” said Tonya Hornbaker, whose daughter Haley Camp was the goalkeeper in Kings Mountain’s contest with R-S Central in the annual Shelby Star/Heyward Shuford Memorial Soccer Showcase Saturday at Gardner-Webb. “She handles it better than I do.”

When playing in goal, besides the task of blocking any attempt by the opposition, they also have to be ready to dash out and grab control despite players trying to get at the ball. They all pay the price with bumps and bruises, with Camp having three pins in one of her little fingers after breaking it last year.

In the mist of that, maintaining calm is crucial.

“She’s done pretty good,” said Derick Boling, the father of freshman keeper Ashley Boling for Burns, which was taking on Fred T. Foard Saturday in the showcase event. “She’s very aggressive. She wants the action to come to her. She likes the challenge.”

The long lapses in between a flurry of action at the goal means a sense of anticipation is everything.

“To be a good goalkeeper in high school,” Burns coach Clint Shuford said, “you have to know when to come off the line at the right time and make the plays you should make. What helps when you take someone who has been a player in the field and put them back there, they know what the flow of the game is like and they can see the game better.”

A player has to have a special competitive fire to excel in goal.

“I know when she was in JV, she got a little aggravated and said ‘put me in goal,’” said Hornbaker of her daughter Haley. “And she’d never been a goalie before.”

Boling also had been used to running the field before assuming her current role with Burns.

“She’s so competitive, she’s played everything — softball and basketball, too,” said Pam Boling of her daughter Ashley. “I had no idea she’d be a goalie, she’s been a striker on her travel team.”

Perhaps the most difficult thing to watch is when opposing teams get a corner-kick opportunity, or a straight-on penalty kick.

“I cover my eyes, I can’t watch,” said Hornbaker. “I wait to hear the crowd before I can look. And I know she takes it so personal. Her attitude is that it (the goal) is ‘her house.’”